FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ONDA sues Department of Interior to uphold BLM decision on Bully Creek

Interior overturned BLM decision to close pasture to grazing in order to prevent immediate harm

ONDA claims Interior violated FLPMA and the Federal Rangeland Health regulations when an administrative law judge overturned BLM's decision to close the Bully Creek Pasture to grazing until 2008, due to the threat of immediate resource damage in redband trout and sage grouse habitat.

OVERVIEW:  On Mar. 13, 2007, the Oregon Natural Desert Association and Western Watersheds Project sued the U.S. Department of the Interior for its decision allowing livestock grazing to continue along Bully Creek in eastern Oregon, without implementing an immediate pasture closure that the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) has determined is necessary to prevent imminent harm to public resources. The ONDA/WWP lawsuit seeks to enforce a positive grazing management decision by BLM, which was halted by the decision of an administrative law judge in Interior’s Office of Hearings and Appeals.

Public Issues:

• Bully Creek:  Headwaters of this stream on BLM’s 11,000-acre “Bully Creek Pasture” are home to native redband trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss ssp.). Stream appears on State of Oregon’s 303(d) list (for high stream temperature) for water bodies not meeting state water quality standards.
• Beaver Dam Creek Wilderness Study Area:  More than 8,300 acres of this WSA lie within the Bully Creek Pasture, as well as portions of ONDA’s Beaver Dam Creek Proposed WSA Addition, a citizen-inventoried area possessing similar wilderness values as the designated WSA.  
• Imperiled Species:  Redband trout are recognized by BLM and Oregon Dep’t of Fish & Wildlife as a special status species; the grazing allotment at issue contains important spawning, migratory, and rearing habitat for redband. Area also is home to Greater sage grouse, Columbia spotted frog, and pronghorn antelope.  
• Government accountability:  In Oct. 2006, BLM decided to close pasture to grazing through 2007:

. . . to prevent further grazing use of riparian herbaceous and browsing of woody vegetation which would lead to declining riparian vegetation health and reduced streambank protection. Continued excessive utilization of riparian herbaceous and woody vegetation, as has happened between 2001 and 2006, could very well severely affect the health of individual plants leading to such effects as reduced root mass, thinning of the plant community and/or limit bank building . . . . In the absence of actions identified in the Bully Creek [Landscape Area Management Plan] which were implemented to attain healthy riparian vegetation, significant progress toward fulfillment of the standards and significant progress toward conformance with the guidelines can not [sic] be attained.

Despite these findings, based on six years of monitoring after initial findings in 1998 of failures to meet rangeland health standards, Interior has stayed BLM’s decision and will allow grazing to continue unabated in 2007.

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